Paul, If your products that you sell are aimed at an older demographic, the proposed health care reforms make some sense for you. Why? Because coverage of pre-existing conditions can only work if mandates are initiated for younger adults. It has to be an 'all in' model, otherwise anyone with a brain would avoid buying health insurance until they had a condition...and that is not insurance. If you accept my premise, you should then agree that small businesses that sell product to a younger customer base will be hurt, because discretionary income will be decreased in this demographic. There is no tort reform in this proposed bill, zippo. If you believe that eliminating "waste, fraud and abuse" from Medicare will save $50B/yr, then you probably need to join the legislators on the shrinks' couches! The essence of this bill is that it taxes those who are not currently being taxed, including many small businesses that do not offer health insurance to their employees. Are you sure this is what people voted for?

Paul, Why not rail against the insurance companies? How is it that most of the developed world manages to have Universal Health Care without lumbering behemoth insurance giants. Your anger is pointed in the wrong direction.

I believe those who say "The American People" with some valid polling data behind them ( check out Rasmussen polls which haven't been wrong in many years now) showing the majority DON'T WANT THIS have a reasonable point to make. We are (still) a Constitutuional Republic, with one adult one vote, which means that the majority of people should be heard. The majority don't want this, that means the "boss" won't be happy if it passes.

BTW Paul, just wait and see what continues to happen to your "small business" as we continue to go down this path of State-control of everyone...from the decibel level of ads to the kind of bag you use at the store to the kind of car you are allowed to drive and the kind of insurance you MUST buy..the Central Planners will destroy your business the same way they destroyed mine. The less control folks have over their lives and the fruits of their labor, the less willing they are to part with what they have left..the less business there is for "small businesses" ...and whether or not the "small business owner" wants to pay for his or her own employees' health insurance or be responsible for his or her own money management soon becomes a moot point.

I think this topic has a great deal of potential for discussion. I cite my personal circumstances as an example of the policy disconnect. Let's continue the discourse.

The problem today is that we have stopped paying attention to manufacturing and keeping our intellectual property. We may think the problems are with the insurance cos. or with the banks. We are playing the financial manipulation games which won't last long. The private sector has left our shores and most (even high tech) manufacturing has been sent offshore with super fast loss off intellectual property. The state is the only one trying to help. Major private businesses are all gone.

I don't blame Obama, but I am not happy with this actions/performance. I don't like it that health care reform become health insurance reform, and now has become health insurance mandate. This is pure insanity, and it will not stop the problem or help citizens with their medical issues. There are hardly words to discuss this with the weird oblique BS that passes for logic and argument on the matter. There is a problem, a job to be done, and no one will make a move based on the most absurd of arguments when we know what the rest of the world has done about health care that is working. Why are Americans stuck with a government and leadership that is substandard ... in every regard and paying the most in the world for it ... sounds familiar in everything. It is so bad there is no way to incrementally fix any of it. And no one is willing to set rational incentives in place because this country seems to exist on windfall profits for the few, and complaints about everyone else. Personally I am a single payer advocate, but the rest of the industrialized world has shown that any model can work if the profit is taken out of health care and regulated, and no matter what we refuse to see that, acknowlege it, and do something about it. What other areas do we have our heads stuck in the sand because we think we are so great, and how bad does it have to get before people are willing to see the truth?

"Why are Americans stuck with a government and leadership that is substandard" The answer, my friend, is grinning in your mirror. Who was it that observed that people in democracies get exactly the governments they deserve?

Too late. I just heard the Senate health destruction bill passed..is this true? Bought off Nelson, Dodd and whatsername in LA. Well. The Dems completely own this one. Gonna be fun. Wait until you start hearing the groaning from all those who thought they wanted this. Add this to the beginning of destroying our justice system ( remember Miranda rights? Well....if we bring Guantanamo prisoners here for civil trials and they hadn't had been "Mirandized", what does this mean for future arrests here? Or do they get off on a technicality?) Gonna be fun... And the next attempt to centralize power into DC over our financial markets. Well...I agree. Democracies get the government they deserve, and pay the price of what they bought. For those of us in health care, the shivers have been intense, and have just turned into a blizzard of meetings and e-mails warning us that the type of care we will be able to provide to the elderly is going to be affected by the coming merging of the House and Senate bill. This is said as "you are going to have to see more patients per day"..which of course means less quality of care per patient. Which is what "controlling costs" has always been about, less care.

Democracies get the government they deserve? Piffle! It is not my fault that, first, we are a Representative Republic and none of our leaders takes seriously their responsiblity to represent the people, especially when it conflicts with money or power. Second, if I got to a restaurant to eat, and all they have are nuts and bolts on the menu it is not my fault if I starve to death. The elite just puts out the information they want people to know, and can shut down things they do not want people to hear or concentrate on, they limit the dicussion and the pool of job applicants. There is no legal responsiblilty for a canidate to tell the truth or do what they promise. The US Constitution and form of governent is now one of the oldest in existence, and it is creaking under the weight of it dysfunction as well as the pressure from those who have prospered tremendously, and not for meritorious actions.

It looks like we got wrong info through our work. The Senate Bill has not yet actually passed. It is just being touted as a "done deal" in hopes it really is a done deal, because of the apparent buy-out of a few souls. Well, let's wait and see. I hope that it changes into something that actually fixes the problems, not make everything more expensive for private insurance, yet have less money per patient in Medicare, as this one supposedly does. If you believe the Machiavellian thinkers, the actual goal is to bear down on the American taxpayers so that they pay more for private insurance, and end up begging to get rid of private insurance and give final power to the Feds over their health care. I am to the point where I almost believe that this is the real goal and why this bill and the Congressional bill actually make private insurance more expensive...the real goal is to destroy all private insurances and hand over all power in health to the Feds...

If you can control corporations, then raise the cost of the necessites those corporations can produce, lowering disposeable income, then competing businesses lose market share, profit and go out of business or sell out, and most people become irrelvent slaves controllable by jobs, food, things. The competing businesses can be bought up cheap, consolidated into a larger corporation under the control of a shadow group, and the process continues until it owns and controls everything. The Constitution and the govenment is irrevent. And everyone shouts about how scary big government is when they do not even have a clue how to find out what big business really is.

The health insurance industry has six lobbyists for every Congress person--500 of them being former congressional staff members. The health care industry has spent 380 million dollars on lobbying, advertising and campaign contributions in just the past few months. Finance Committee Chairman Baucus got $1.5M! No surprise that he voted NO on the public option. Over the past twenty years, current members of the Senate Finance Committee have collected nearly 50 million dollars from the health sector. Time to rewrite the Constitituion to reflect reality: We the CEOs of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Corporation, establish lobbies, insure our bonuses, provide for our prosperity, promote our general power, and secure the Blessings of Wealth to ourselves and our families, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

We understand that California lost 47 Thousand Businesses last year! ? COST OF STATE REGULATIONS ON CALIFORNIA SMALL BUSINESSESWeb Link The study finds that the total cost of regulation to the State of California is $492.994 billion which is almost five times the State?s general fund budget, and almost a third of the State?s gross product. The total cost of regulation results in an employment loss of 3.8 million jobs which is a tenth of the State?s population. Since small business constitute 99.2% of all employer businesses in California, and all of non-employer business, the regulatory cost is borne almost completely by small business. ? Los Angeles is bankrupt, yet the City Council just voted Water and Power employees a 5 year contract with raises EVERY YEAR of from 2 to 4 percent

Web Link Can I have one of these jobs at the expense of your children's future? or one of the jobs from the "stimulus" that averaged $500,000/job last year? yep..great way to "stimulate" the economy, borrow $100,000s/job from our kids to pay non-productive jobs now (none of these govt "jobs" actually produces any wealth at all. You can't spend your way out of a recession). Let's take the greatest wealth producing machine in the world and change it! Does anyone wonder why all of us working folks, esp. with kids..are so "angry" as Paul says??